Oh.. I have no doubt it'll get better.. it has to... The one thing that this does have over the Lending Library for Prime members is that with Kindle Unlimited, you can borrow more than one book a month. That's the one drawback I don't like about the lending library. If you borrow a book on the first day of the month and finish the book in 2-3 days, you have to wait until the first of the next month to get a new book. So Kindle Unlimited has that going for it as it will appeal to people that read a lot more in a month.. I liken the Lending Library to a casual reader that doesn't read a whole lot each month.

I guess it could be a benefit if you read significantly more than one Prime book per month.

:nod: For the past couple of years I've had, and met, a goal of reading 50 books a year. This year, I upped it to 60. So I definitely read more than one book a month. I've used the lending library a few times when I couldn't find the ebook to check out from my local library or just wanted something different. The lending library selection isn't horrible... but there room for adding more authors and books to it for sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Groucho

Also, the Kendle Lending library only works on a physical Kindle device (no third party tablets, phones, etc). Kindle Unlimited works on everything.

I forgot about that part too from the Kindle Unlimited announcement.. That is a definite perk as well over the Lending Library.

I thought the Kindle Lending Library where Prime members get to borrow one book a month had VERY limited selection. This service is for every book they sell, all ~600,000.

It's not for a light reader like me, but I think you guys are selling it a bit short.

Is that actually the case? If so, I need to re-read the announcement and reconsider. I thought the announcement was that at start it would be a limited availability with hopefully more added as it goes on and publishers are on board. If its every Kindle book they have available, then I may sign up as there are a number of books that I want to read that aren't available at my local library to borrow the e-book.

After months of speculation, Amazon on Friday introduced a digital subscription service that allows subscribers to download unlimited e-books and digital audiobooks for $10 a month. The service, Kindle Unlimited, offers a Netflix-style, all-you-can-read approach to a library of more than 600,000 e-books, including blockbuster series like “The Hunger Games” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” nonfiction titles like Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys,” and literary fiction and classics.

News of the service was reported earlier this week when Amazon accidentally posted a promotional video for the subscription model. The video was quickly removed from Amazon’s website, but not before technology bloggers took notice.

So far, it appears that few of the biggest publishers will make their titles available through the service. Books from HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, for example, are not offered, representatives from both companies confirmed. A spokesman for Penguin Random House declined to comment, but titles from the company’s 100-plus imprints are not currently available on Kindle Unlimited.

When the service began on Friday morning, some popular books were noticeably absent. Subscribers who want to read Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” or Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” won’t find those books on Kindle Unlimited, at least not yet. (Books that can be downloaded free as part of the subscription have an orange “Kindle Unlimited” icon under the title, along with a $0.00 price tag.)

Now to find if the books I want to read are marked with the orange "Kindle Unlimited" tag.

I think the reason that it seemed limited is that many of the bigger publishers weren't participating in the lending library and aren't, at least at the moment, part of Kindle Unlimited. The 4 books that I want to read aren't showing the orange Kindle Unlimited tag..

I think I'm going to watch and wait for a while to see how it plays out and if more publishers jump on board to make their books part of unlimited.

I don't see major publishers dropping their newest books into this. There is no incentive for them to.

Still, I think I would rather have this as part of Prime than music streaming. Personal preference. Well, my wife's personal preference. Since the price of Prime went up, I'm not kicking in another $10 on top of it.

I couldn't tell, is the Unlimited DEVICE specific, or ACCOUNT specific? I have both mine and my wife's kindle under the same amazon account. Would one Unlimited account allow me to have different books on the two kindles, or is the Unlimited account applied to only one of the devices? I imagine it's tied to the account, but I'd like to make sure.

I just read the below article which really threw cold water on this deal for me (and ebooks in general really) from an economic standpoint.

In summary, of the 600k titles on Kindle Unlimited, 500k are books from self published authors. And in order to be a self published author on Amazon, you must agree to have your book in this program and it must be exclusive to Amazon (you literally can't even sell it on your own website). And are you paid for each book you sell? Actually, no, you are paid by how much a reader reads of your book. Every 10% of your book read nets you more.

Stuff like this makes me want to go out of my way to buy the paper version from the store down the street. Amazon is turning the industry on its head, and to each his own but it's just not sitting well with me anymore.

And for the record, services like Oyster have deals from the major publishing houses (unlike Amazon) because they pay authors fairly.

I couldn't tell, is the Unlimited DEVICE specific, or ACCOUNT specific? I have both mine and my wife's kindle under the same amazon account. Would one Unlimited account allow me to have different books on the two kindles, or is the Unlimited account applied to only one of the devices? I imagine it's tied to the account, but I'd like to make sure.

I don't know the answer but let's take the worst-case scenario and say it's account specific. You can have 10 books checked out at a time. Do you and your wife really need more than 5 books out at a time? Then return and get another one.

I just read the below article which really threw cold water on this deal for me (and ebooks in general really) from an economic standpoint.

In summary, of the 600k titles on Kindle Unlimited, 500k are books from self published authors. And in order to be a self published author on Amazon, you must agree to have your book in this program and it must be exclusive to Amazon (you literally can't even sell it on your own website). And are you paid for each book you sell? Actually, no, you are paid by how much a reader reads of your book. Every 10% of your book read nets you more.

Stuff like this makes me want to go out of my way to buy the paper version from the store down the street. Amazon is turning the industry on its head, and to each his own but it's just not sitting well with me anymore.

And for the record, services like Oyster have deals from the major publishing houses (unlike Amazon) because they pay authors fairly.

That program requires authors to restrict the availability of their title to Amazon's Kindle platform for up to 90 days at a time in exchange for higher royalties on e-book sales -- sales ostensibly undercut by the availability of these books on Amazon's growing number of e-book lending services.

You can choose to get higher royalties and be exclusive or lower royalties and not be exclusive. That's not the same as you must have it in the program.

You can choose to get higher royalties and be exclusive or lower royalties and not be exclusive. That's not the same as you must have it in the program.

I may very well be wrong, but the way I understand it is the different royalty scales connected to a book's exclusivity is for book SALES. To be a part of the SUBSCRIPTION service requires exclusivity. There is a link in the article to a blog where they discuss it.

But you can choose not to be a part of it for less money. And if you're a part of it you get money if they read your book, and the customer is not paying for it, so there's more of a chance that they'll read your book.

The incentive of dollars would prevent major releases from being included ... at least for quite some time after release.

Well, you said there was no incentive at all for them to do it. I said the incentive is the same as it is for any of these subscription deals: Amazon pays them money for the titles in the program. However, I also acknowledged that the economics of the system would likely restrict the availability to catalog titles, not new releases. Not sure why you needed to argue with my point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arbogast777

And are you paid for each book you sell? Actually, no, you are paid by how much a reader reads of your book. Every 10% of your book read nets you more.

Nice. So Amazon knows that everyone grabs all the free downloads, iTunes episodes, etc. they can, whether or not they get around to actually reading or viewing it. So they monitor customers' individual devices and track what they're reading before the royalties kick in. Next up: automated reading scripts, or authors telling kids "Hey, I'll let you watch TV if you just take this machine and scroll through all the pages while you're watching!"